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This isn’t really a new thought I’ve had, but I’ve finally been driven to write it down by a great quote in one of the books I’m reading as part of Stanford’s “Three Books” program for all my little incoming freshmen. The book is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and — contrary to what I was thinking before I started it — it’s a pretty fascinating look and the intersection of modern medicine and traditional Hmong culture (I haven’t finished it, though, and maybe there’s some wild nonfiction plot twist!), but the quote is from Hippocrates:

Men think it is divine merely because they don’t understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.

I’m not showcasing this quote to stifle wonder and awe at the mysteries and beauty of the world — far from it. I think those emotions are powerful and beautiful in their own right. I’ve got no problems with faith and religion as a way to explain things mankind can’t understand (as long as no one’s knocking on my door or telling me I’m going to hell or both).

Okay, so what this post is about, then, is creationism. This is the idea that’s been floating in my head for months.

Full disclosure: I am a staunch evolutionist. (If you’re surprised by this fact, hi! I’m Seth.) I truly think that the reason creationism exists as an idea — more so than a literal interpretation of the Bible — is that people do not understand how goddamn big these numbers we’re talking about are. There’s no way to fathom hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of years. It’s impossible. The human mind cannot do it. So I’m proposing a helpful aid.

Scientists (if you believe these technowizards) have dated the last common ancestor between mankind and chimpkind to between five and seven million years ago. To illustrate how mind-numbingly, unbelievably, incredibly FUCKING HUGE this amount of time is, here is the number “1” just one million times. Five million is FIVE TIME THIS: